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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304097">A Seed of Song: Fives Hymns The Muses Sing of Hades and Persephone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/serephemeral/pseuds/serephemeral'>serephemeral</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Aims - Vienna Teng (Album), Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore, Hymn to Demeter - Homer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, F/M, Family Drama, Long-Distance Relationship, Romance, Yuletide Treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:47:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,870</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304097</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/serephemeral/pseuds/serephemeral</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The blooms were beautiful, their yellow centers like suns among many white-petaled stars, and they trembled beneath her touch. Yet it was not the flowers that held her entranced.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Seed of Song: Fives Hymns The Muses Sing of Hades and Persephone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/gifts">calenlily</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>I. Never Look Away </b>
</p><p>The blooms were beautiful, their yellow centers like suns among many white-petaled stars, and they trembled beneath her touch. Yet it was not the flowers that held her entranced.   </p><p>There was a fecundity to him; for all that his dark eyes could quench, so too could they kindle. </p><p>Was it her imagination, this sudden heat between them? Or did the beat of her hammer-pounding heart, her lightning-struck senses echo in his pulse? </p><p>“It is long since I felt alive” he said, fingers brushing her slender wrist as he moved to trace the petals of the blossom she held. She fancied that the words half-caught in his throat as he spoke them, as if giving voice to his thoughts would sap the thrumming life of the moment -- as if it would falter, dreamlike, and they would both wake to a dulled, withering world. </p><p>“It is long since I felt desire,” she answered. </p><p>“What <em> is </em> she doing?” hissed Admete. <br/><br/>Phaino wrung her robes. “Should we worry?”</p><p>“Why shouldn’t she enjoy him?” Styx smiled archly. </p><p>The chatter of the Okeanides faded as their hands met, her palm pressing against his. Lush possibilities sprang from the ground before them, and the limits of the world of the living dissolved as vines before locusts. A vast endarkened path opened to her as her mind twined with his, and then she heard him, as plainly as if he echoed from her very marrow:<br/><br/><em> They will call it corruption. They will call me a demon.  </em></p><p><em> And what is the nature of this corruption, Unseen One? </em>It did not escape her that he shivered as she wound her thought with his, as if he might come undone before her even here, even now. </p><p>
  <em> To witness you in your becoming, Persephone. To know the geography of you. To waken the storm inside you and open myself to the flood. To dwell in your warm gaze, always.  </em>
</p><p><em>Yes</em>, she resounded. <em> Know me, as the darkness knows the germinating seed. Let me pierce the cold of you as a moonbeam pierces the winter. I wish to know the weight of your bones upon mine, Hades. Take me home.  </em></p><p>She did not take her eyes from his as he swept her into his chariot, as the Okeanides began to cry out and she heard the distant voices of Pallas and Artemis join the chorus of alarm. She did not flinch as the horses thundered down, down, down into the depths of the earth, away from the green world of her mother, beyond every limitation and ward of protection Demeter had sown. She did not look away as the dread of his countenance deepened, as the shape of him began to impress endings on the world around them, as the Unseen One, the Lord of the Dead, the King of the Underworld, came into his own realm.   </p><p>“You did not look back,” he said in wonder. “You did not look away.” </p><p>“Never,” she breathed, resting her forehead against his. “I will never look away.” </p><p> </p><hr/><p>
  <b>II. Landsailor </b>
</p><p>She took to the darkness and the deep as she had taken to him, garmenting herself in the cloudlike strands of decay and finality that were spun through the tapestry of the Underworld. Or perhaps the darkness and the deep took to her, drawn to the quickening power of her step, her touch, her gaze. The vast lands of the Underworld unfurled themselves to her as blossoms opening to the sun, her power leaving nothing unchanged: the grey-touched fields and meadows now greening to bring forth berries, island upon distant island glistening with golden mist. </p><p>There, she had been the daughter of long-haired Demeter, a thing to carefully guarded, cautiously kept. Here, she was Queen: Persephone Lightbringer, the Tamer of Night.</p><hr/><p>She stood now at the door to their chambers, ready to fling it open, to bear down on him and work out her innermost dreams upon his waiting body. But there was a tension in the air, a thick, thunderous quality that dimly recalled other, more volatile members of their family. </p><p>“Hades?” she said, puzzled.</p><p>The door swung open to reveal him, lithe and long and sinuous in his sable robes. He stood with his back to her, gazing out a window into the distance, and did not stir as she entered. </p><p>“Hades!” she called his name again. “Husband. What troubles you?” </p><p>Time wheeled and spiraled in its fractal dance, and the world closed and split open and closed again, and still he was silent. At last he spoke: slowly, purposefully, frustration eddying in his voice. </p><p>“Was it folly to think you would love me as I am? I, the Unseen One, headless and faceless, tireless and seamless, the doom of all worlds, the last and greatest force of equalization. Was it was folly to think you could love this place -- this place which strips all things to their essence and brings them, bare and trembling, to be witnessed for what they are? My heart hoped, Persephone…” </p><p>She joined him at the window and let her hands find their way around him, let her chin come to rest upon his shoulder. “I make my bed with you, my Doombringer, my Earthbreaker, my Unseen One. My husband. Do you not see? Your power works on me as it does everything that dwells here.” She sank her thought into him, winding their minds together once more, beckoning him towards the tender expanse of their bed. </p><p>
  <em> You have cracked my ciphers, beloved, and now the fullness of my being is unleashed. If this is the price of our union, I pay it willingly. Will you witness me for what I am? Will you have me in full?  </em>
</p><p>His being wrapped around hers: they were together a beginning and an ending, blossoming and withering, striving and completion, the most exquisite of paradoxes. </p><p><em> I will know you</em>. <em> I will have you in full, </em> the answer came. <em> Though I strive with you, you complete my work, as I complete yours. </em></p><p>Then her yearning mouth found his, and she pulled him down onto their bed, caring only to feel the beating of his heart against hers, the heat of his mouth on her belly and thighs, the hitch of his breath as she surrounded him. And night stretched into indulgent night. <br/><br/></p><hr/><p>The dead marveled, mingling and filling the lands. Damned souls found new purpose; souls glutted on the spoils of paradise found relief. Commoner and king feasted side by side, and the soil of the kingdom of the dead broke open for her and gave forth the stuff of her dreams, and the servants of Hades revered her. </p><hr/><p>
  <b>III. Oh Mama No </b>
</p><p>“She is your mother,” Hermes said, as if that mattered, as if Demeter could not have made her own way down into the lower worlds had she wished, as if guilt were an adequate substitute for honesty. She must have looked as sharp as she felt, for Hermes raised his hands and began to retreat. “I’m only saying it because she loves you. She misses you.”<br/><br/>“If she misses me so much, why does she not come to me?” She tasted the bitterness of the words as they left her mouth, marked the pity in the Golden-Wanded One's eyes as he turned to go, his feet beginning to skim the dark moss of the cavern. </p><p>“She might, were she able. Grief has sapped her.” And then he was gone. </p><hr/><p>They held the scarlet seeds to one another’s lips, each one received as the holiest of communions.<br/><br/><em> I am yours always</em>, she told him. <em>But I am also hers. I come from her, and her world calls to me. It is my inheritance, as this is yours.  </em></p><p><em> Go to her</em>, he answered, and his thought was soft and sweet against hers. <em> Catch up her dark robes and renew her joy. But do not stay forever, Lightbringer. I cannot abide without you.  </em></p><hr/><p> <br/>Her mother rushed to her, beautiful hair and dark robes streaming behind her. She was the same Demeter, but time had aged her cruelly as a barren field in the depths of winter. She threw her arms about Persephone’s neck and wept. She buried her face in Persephone’s hair and took in great lungfuls of scent, and sang “my daughter, my daughter” into Persephone's own hands as a worshipper sings a hymn, and Persphone’s heart shattered in a way she had not known it could.<br/><br/>“Must you go back forever? Or may we have -- will you stay here for a little while?” her mother asked, cradling one of Persephone’s palms against her withered cheek. </p><p>“Oh mama,” Persephone breathed, tears splashing down onto Demeter’s fingertips. “Oh mama, no -- oh, mama, no. I will.”  <b></b> <b></b></p><hr/><p>
  <b>IV. Copenhagen </b>
</p><p>The mountain cut into her feet, hard, unyielding, utterly unlike the verdant fields and mossy caverns she made her home. The words flying between those present cut into her heart.  </p><p>“I am her mother,” Demeter hissed. “The fields and furrows and everything green and growing are her inheritance. She belongs here.”<br/><br/>“She is my <em> wife</em>,” Hades said, low and even. “She claimed her own path. My realm is hers. Our home aches for the want of her.”  </p><p>“Zeus says that you must come to an accord.” Rhea was prim, and unmistakably proud to have been selected as an ambassador to this particular negotiation. “He declares we must have peace.”<br/><br/>They rained down volleys of words upon each other like arrows, until the rising voices and haughty gestures and threats of leaving swirled like a maelstrom in Persephone’s mind. She felt she might go mad. Perhaps there was no pleasing everyone; perhaps there was only this indefinite squabbling, a discord to be quieted and packed away and revived in another year, another place, another absence. </p><p>“Stop.” Her voice rang out clear and cold, deep and powerful as the earth, coiling around the tension like vines sending their confident tendrils out over stone. “All of you:<em> let me go</em>.”<br/><br/></p><hr/><p>
  <b>V. Flyweight Love </b>
</p><p>The years passed, brief as seconds and long as time itself, each reunion as sweet as the night of their wedding, each parting as bitter as the last. </p><p>But now she had returned to this home, to <em> their </em>home, and she rested her head on his shoulder as he pressed his lips into her hair. </p><p>“It is odd,” he murmured, his fingers tracing a path down her temples, down over her long neck, down, down, until they found her hands -- and there they lingered. “That the time should mystify one such as I. That Death should look upon the world and find himself in love with the teeming wilderness of life, the touch of his beloved. That the long years of parting should themselves become our vows.”</p><p>“‘In this bed that we make together,’” she recited, the words as fresh in her mind now as on the long-ago day of their joining. “‘May every nail be revealed.’” </p><p><em> Lifebringer</em>, he joined in. <em> Be my bride in full.  </em></p><p>She rose up to pull him into a deep, lingering kiss. <em> Here I am</em>.</p><p><em> Here you are</em>, he answered. </p><p>They breathed into each other, twilight opening itself to dawn, the moment sweet as honey on the tongue. </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For calenlily - I had such fun reading the prompts in your letter and dabbling in this bit of fusion! Aims is one of my favorite albums of all time, and after reading your letter I couldn't stop playing with the idea of the songs being a commentary on Hades and Persephone's relationship. It was such a delight to try to weave together Vienna Teng's lyrics with something inspired by Homeric style. Thanks for this lovely inspiration. Wishing you a very merry Yuletide!</p><p>Notes:</p><p>I referenced this translation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter while writing: https://uh.edu/~cldue/texts/demeter.html</p><p>You can listen to Vienna Teng's excellent album, Aims, here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4Ezl6L07JRUsUseRzWFywp?si=v8O0Vkl2SY-TE0ND_5qq0A and read through the lyrics here: https://genius.com/albums/Vienna-teng/Aims</p></blockquote></div></div>
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